


Something lost, something found

by i_gaze_at_scully



Series: Dog Owner AU [4]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-09-13 19:57:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16898940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_gaze_at_scully/pseuds/i_gaze_at_scully





	Something lost, something found

The thunder is cacophonous. If Mulder wasn’t up already, it probably would have woken him. He almost doesn’t hear the frantic pounding at the door, but Luna cocks her head and Mulder listens again more closely.

When he opens the door, Dana is standing there, arms wrapped around herself. She’s physically shaking, drenched from the rain and white as a sheet.

“Mulder, I need your help,” she stutters through chattering teeth. She doesn’t apologize for the hour, nor does she ask to come in. “It’s Stella.” He wordlessly grabs his raincoat and a flashlight.

“Stella!” He shouts into the wind, unsure if it’s the dark of night or wall of water that swallows his words. His light crisscrosses with Dana’s, cuts through the street in v’s and x’s, illuminating slivers of road and bush and fence. But no Stella.

“Stella!” Dana calls, voice strong and high, in the timbre he assumes she always calls her dog in. The only hint at her fear is the hitch in her breath after the word is out.

“When did you realize she was gone?” The investigator in him kicks into high gear.

“I came home from work and… I swear I shut the front door… she never…” Thunder cackles overhead and Dana stops to look at Mulder, shining her flashlight just below his face. He notes the sharp line of her jaw, its refusal to quiver despite the emotion in her words. “I just want her to come home.”

“We’re going to find her.” He cups her face and thumbs droplets of moisture of undetermined origin from her cheek. She nods, rebuilding her resolve, and he turns to make good on his word.

“Stella!” They shout in unison.

It’s a long night in the cold, in the rain. They traverse the neighborhood and he watches her as much as he watches out for Stella; she is fortitudinous, never giving up or breaking down.

Smart dog that she is, Stella took shelter in a dugout on a baseball field nearby. They find her shaking and soaked, and Dana falls to her knees and hugs the pup before leashing her to go home.

“Let’s get everyone dried off,” Mulder says. Suddenly Dana is in his arms, her fear subsiding and giving way to relief and gratitude. He holds her loosely, a small smile spread across his face. “My place is closer.”

When they get in, Luna is barking up a storm. Mulder, soaked to the bone, recognizes too late that they probably should have just gone to her home instead. He has exactly three bath towels and one robe. He shamefully brings the two clean towels out for Dana and Stella and towels himself off with his own.

She thanks him quietly and wraps Stella in the towel before drying her own hair. She pats at her pants futilely and he clears his throat. “I uh, have this robe if you wanted. I don’t want to presume, but I figured you’d rather be dry.” She cracks a tired smile and nods. Minutes later, she comes back from the bathroom in his robe with wet hair, like she’s just taken a shower, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. And somehow, it is.

“I hung my clothes on the shower rod. I hope that’s all right.” He nods, having changed into dryer clothes himself.

“Smart,” he says. “Better than the sopping pile of clothes I have on my floor now.”

Stella is lying comfortably by the radiator, Luna a few feet away. There is a moment that hangs in the air where Mulder wants to crack a joke, make light of the whole thing. But Dana is standing there in his living room, swallowed in his robe, and there’s something in her eyes that stops the words dead in his throat. Instead, he finds himself sitting against the couch on the floor next to Luna, one hand rubbing her belly, while Dana sprawls out on the couch behind him. He finds himself baring his soul to her, and he finds himself comfortable and safe.

“I was twelve when it happened. My sister was eight. She just disappeared out of her bed one night. Just gone, vanished. No note, no phone calls, no evidence of anything.”

“You never found her.” It’s not a question. There is unbounded sympathy in her voice, but none of the pity he’s come to contempt but accept from people.

“Tore the family apart. No one would talk about it. There were no facts to confirm, nothing to offer any hope.”

“What did you do?”

“Eventually, I went off to school in England, I came back, got recruited by the bureau. Seems I had a natural aptitude for applying behavioural models to criminal cases.”

He tells her about the X Files, about the conspiracies he’s shrouded in that he’s only just beginning to understand. He tells her about the regression treatment and elaborates on his belief in the existence of extraterrestrial life. No matter what he throws at her, she stays perched on that couch, no hint of panic or disdain in her voice. Not to say she buys any of it, though.

He learns that she rewrote Einstein for her senior thesis. He gives her a lot of credit for that one.

They talk long past the last raindrops, past the night’s memory of the storm, into the early hours of the day when thin sunlight stripes them both through the slats of his blinds.

Her clothes must still be damp when she changes back into them, and he wishes he had something for her to wear home.

“Mulder, I can’t thank you enough,” she says as he walks her to his door, his hand resting on the small of her back as if anchored by a magnet.

“I’m just glad we found her.” She nods, turning in the doorway and unconsciously patting Stella’s head. “What do you say we hang out one of these days without chaos preceding, or ensuing?” He asks, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I’d like that.”


End file.
